Agnieszka Tarnowska
A sharp mind is all well and good, but it's never enough. Knowledge isn't power, power lies wherever people believe it does and it takes a sharp tongue rather than a clever thought to change that. Character is a Human knowledge cleric played by Charlie. Biography We must all start somewhere I spent much of my early life as little more than an incarcerated slave within the Tenebris Orphanage in Talmira, the grand imperial capital of the collapsing remains of Asmor. The master, Devran, was a terrible man and a serial abuser unable to form a single pleasant thought I’m certain of it. To tell the truth, I can’t say that I recall a huge amount of the eight years that I spend in captivity there. All I remember are a few people and faces, a small number of specific events and a constant sense of fear, dread and clawing hunger. That last one in particular set in motion the events that led to me being where I am now. At some point, you just can’t lie down and take it any longer. I stole some of Devran’s own food, a sizeable slice of a rich meat pie and I had never felt so full in my entire pathetic little life. Of course, I couldn’t have gotten away with it but for Ricard. He was the eldest in Tenebris and fiercely protective over the rest of us. It was he who confessed to having stolen the pie. We all stood and watched, terrified into silence, eyes wide open in morbid disbelief as we watched Devran beat him to death. Eventually he stood away from the ruin on the warped wooden floor beneath him, wiping the blood from his face he instructed us to clean up the remains before returning to his bottles. Frankly I wouldn’t have lasted another week there, but fortune be praised I only had to survive another four days. In response to the incident, conditions deteriorated further and so when the door was kicked in and Devran was seized by members of the Scaled Knights, only five of us remained. I was never told how they decided that the orphanage had to be closed but I’m endlessly thankful that it was and can only hope that Devran was suitably punished. I never saw the other Tenebris survivors and honestly can’t recall their faces or names at this point either, but I do recall what happened to me next. The call of Hashan I was taken to the temple of Hashan and, for whatever reason, the acolytes there took a shining to me. I was taken into the fold, fed, clothed and most importantly, educated. These were all things I had had no real experience with before but was very ready to take full advantage of. I excelled in every manner of education that they offered, feverishly doing anything I could to force out the memories of Tenebris and forge a new path for my life. During this time, I was surrounded and educated alongside a large group of other children from a wide variety of backgrounds, some rescued like me and others from a much more privileged upbringing. I had trouble really relating to any of the other children there and spent most of my time alone, reading, writing and practising without much in the way of communication or contact with anyone aside from the priests themselves. Eventually, at the age of 12 I was given the opportunity to join the priesthood directly and become a full adherent of Hashan. Naturally this was an opportunity I was very quick to snap up, adherence to Hashan meant more information, more research more utilisation of my talents… but it was more than that. I felt drawn towards this path as a lost wanderer may follow a river to find their way, and in doing so I learned how to do more than I could ever have imagined. As my magical powers blossomed and grew, so to did my rapacious hunger to devour more and more knowledge wherever I could. I was quick to study and master numerous fields including alchemy, medicine, the aethersphere, history, nature, the arcane, the occult and what tantalisingly little magitech I could get my hands on. Over this time, I had built something of a rapport with Tiberius Fiduria the high priest of Hashan, who had in turn taken direct interest in the research that I was engaged in. He was the man who made Magister Elizabeth Ailamos salient to my existance, a revolutionary within the archaic magisterium and woman in need of bright young minds for her own projects. And so it was, at the age of 16 I was given the opportunity to work on what I was assured would be something amazing, and be generously rewarded for it too. Naturally, I accepted. Our intentions corrupted I had never seen such finery and excess my entire life. Despite being at the lower end of the Magisterium, Elizabeth still had extraordinary resources at her disposal and was undeniably ready to make full use of them. I was escorted through her mansion and taken to the top of a grand spire where I first met my colleagues, as well as Elizabeth herself. She was a grand woman, greying, tall and abundantly severe with an unnatural elegance in her poise and appearance, clearly holding the other three young prodigies in enraptured awe. With the showmanship of the finest of players, she swept away the sheeting from the object in the centre of the room, revealing a magitech device the like of which I had never seen before but instantly recognised. Elizabeth outlined to us what we needed to do; the generator she had got her hands on simply wasn’t good enough- a 12.5% power draw was insufficient for her needs and she impressed upon us the impact that these devices could have on Asmor as a whole. As I listened to her talk, I couldn’t help but find myself drawn and enraptured by her just like the others and before long felt just as engaged in our mission as she herself seemed to be. We were going to be crucial in saving Asmor. After her talk, Elizabeth left us with the generator to introduce ourselves and get to work. My new colleagues were Albert Cifip, a young and comparatively wealthy inventor and explorer with an easy charm and a quick wit, Saoirse Harlan, a sweet and bright artificer and celebrated alchemist with an eternally optimistic outlook, and Caoimhe Harlan, Saoirse’s twin sister and a powerful mage to boot though far more nervous and cautious than her sister. While we were all different in many ways, we shared a rapacious intellect and a keen desire to learn more and improve things where we could. This project seemed like a good first step. It took four months and two days to finish. We were able to improve power draw to 26.8% and Elizabeth was ecstatic with the results, apparently it would be perfect for what she wanted. As promised, we were rewarded generously for our work with money as well as research positions in the University of Talmira. Over the following couple of years, Elizabeth repeatedly called on our team to work on a number of other projects for her which we were able to complete with similar results as before, always generously rewarded for our efforts of course. We felt as though we were on top of the world, everything going our way and with each other by our sides we felt invincible. Of course, this was a total farce. I was the one who found out what our little projects had contributed towards when I heard talk of the razing of Vyarka. It turned out that Elizabeth Ailamos had significant aeronautical interests and had used us all to create the most powerful airship Asmor ever had at its disposal which had then been immediately put into use in the hobgoblin offence in the north. Vyarka was a significant city, which meant that there were thousands of slaves also there. Instead of liberating them of course the Asmori military machine laid waste to the entire area. There were few to no survivors. A parting of ways I felt betrayed. We were told that what we did would save Asmor and I suppose that in Elizabeth’s eyes that’s what she was doing but I couldn’t see it the same way. I don’t want to work for death, I want to help, and this wasn’t help. I told Albert first, he was just as shocked as I was and immediately began planning how to leave Asmor forever. Saoirse and Caoimhe didn’t want to believe it at first, they couldn’t believe that they had been responsible in some way for what happened and frankly neither could I. It didn’t take long to convince them though; the evidence was all there. It was Saoirse who came up with the plan, with her characteristically unflinching good cheer she mentioned how she had been contacted by an anonymous source a short while before about leaving Asmor behind and working for a group that called itself the ‘Venatori Umborum’. Seemingly, they were interested in seeking truth, independent of national governments to twist and corrupt the research that is conducted. It seemed a perfect fit and a genuine godsend given the circumstances and so we made preparations to leave. I had always maintained a close relationship with the hierarchy of Hashan while working in Talmira, contributing to church proceedings and offering guidance as a priest of Hashan should. This meant that I often spent time with Tiberius himself, as the man responsible for similarly offering guidance to his priests I felt that I should discuss my plans with him. The bastard sold us out. So far as I can tell, he passed everything that I said on to Elizabeth, why, I don’t know. I can only assume that he must have had some significant debt to her and may Hashan curse him for it as a false worshipper. Regardless of his exact intentions, the result was that on our way to the train station we were cornered by thugs in an empty street. I’ve tried a few times to remember exactly what happened then, but I never can, I don’t think my mind likes to hold onto violent memories very much, but I remember the results. Somehow as if by a miracle, Albert managed to drive myself and Caoimhe away. Saoirse didn’t make it. I don’t think she was killed but taken by the Magisterium is probably just as bad. We drove for days through empty countryside, desperate to leave Asmor as soon as we could. Without Saoirse, the idea of finding a group as elusive as the Venatori went out the window so Albert and I decided to escape to Edranar, but Caoimhe wouldn’t come with us. She took Saoirse’s loss hard, very hard and quickly slipped into despair despite everything Albert and I tried. She couldn’t bare to be with us, we reminded her of too much and so at the border she left us to strike off on her own to Tae-Osh where Asmor would never be able to get to her. And so, the four became two. Albert and I alone in a strange country and a stranger city with no friends and barely even an understanding of the language, only a handful of our creations and a few thousand in Asmori gold to make our way. There are always more possibilities Admittedly it turned out comparatively easy to fit into Khora life. As a high-ranking priest of Hashan myself, I was very quickly able to secure support and contacts from the priesthood based in Khora. The main issue to overcome was the technological culture shock, the leap from Talmira to Khora is a huge one. There were cars everywhere, lighting everywhere and constructs everywhere, we were very much out of our depth. Luckily, the priests were able to recommend where to go to help orient ourselves and catch up on what the rest of the world had easy access to. It took me two years to graduate from the Royal Khora University with a mastery of what would be to most people a lethal dose of cutting-edge magical theory and magitech understanding at the age of 20. I especially enjoyed meeting and discussing matters on equal terms with some of the foremost minds of the city, the level of expertise I could garner and have access to was intoxicating. After Albert and I had caught up with the technological level of the rest of the world, we were ready to push that level even further. Of course, none of it was anything I couldn’t have worked out for myself given five years, but getting a head start on matters was certainly welcome. In order to ride the cutting edge of advancement, we would have need of resources and a place of work. I was recommended to the Truth Seekers by the priesthood and had no trouble being accepted into that guild. They required the presentation of a unique invention or new and innovative paper, between myself and Albert we had dozens of these already and were able to quickly achieve positions of significant repute within the organisation. Naturally, Edranar being the military propaganda machine that it is, and me being unable to keep a secret to save my life, our stay had to be cut short. Turns out that the Truth Seekers were little more than a front for the titanic military establishment to reap new innovations and scout brilliant minds for its own purposes, whether or not that’s an intentional part of their ethos or just the result of pervading corruption was irrelevant, the result was that we would have to leave again. A person can be forgiven for feeling disillusionment with the world after constantly being taken advantage of and I’d be lying if I didn’t begin to feel helpless. It seemed as though we would never get the chance to really do what we were meant to and may have to just accept the loss of our ideas and their subsequent perversion at the hands of an uncaring war machine. And we might have done just that, if not for the Venatori Umborum. The promise of an independent environment free of the politics of nations to truly innovate without restrictions had never been so enticing, the only issue of course is that we had no idea how to find it aside from a flippant mention of the free city of Lhea from Saoirse and so that became our destination. Albert and I still had commitments in Edranar, to the Truth Seekers in particular who were more and more demanding on our time and efforts and so some manner of covert escape would be necessary. Last time we had tried such a thing it had gone horribly, so we reasoned that garnering help from someone with greater clandestine experience would be a boon to our efforts. Albert was much more effective at such things than me, so he began careful inquiries within the criminal underbelly of Khora while I maintained our appearance at the guild, covering for him as best I could. Before long, he managed to secure an introduction with a magic user who called herself Mask but who assured us she could secure herself and the two of us transport to Lhea without being noticed by the state. As it turned out, it wasn’t the state that noticed. Turns out that Mask must have been involved in some extremely dark dealings that she was trying to escape from herself because on our way to the airship we were going to stow away on the three of us were attacked on the streets of Khora. Mask seemed to recognise our assailant, muttering the name ‘Dervish’ in a shocked whisper before he was upon us. I have never been much of a warrior, but by this point I had access to some pretty significant magic which I was quick to employ towards slowing his furious assault. It was almost over as soon as it started, Dervish was extremely quick to drop Mask before she even had a chance to react and then he turned his attention on myself and Albert, though found that between my magic and Albert’s shooting he wasn’t able to take on the pair of us and had to beat a hasty retreat before he himself sustained critical injuries. Abandoning Mask’s body in the street, Albert and I rushed for the airship before we could be found by the police, or worse, and finally left the city. Too good to be true Lhea is a weird city full of weird foreign conflicts and competing business interests, a bustling grove of opportunity for anyone who knows how to use it. Given my ineptitude with subtlety and secrecy, Albert began the subtle investigation for the Venatori himself while I worked within the priesthood to gather money to support us. It didn’t take long for him to get contacted, turns out that you don’t find the Venatori, the Venatori finds you. It’s no overstatement to say that we were a perfect fit for the organisation, driven, brilliant and desperate to unravel the secrets of the universe without national loyalty. For the first time in our lives, we were truly free to pursue our intellectual desires and build and innovate on what was genuinely the bleeding edge of modern understanding. There’s no doubt in my mind that my years within the Venatori were the happiest of my life. Without the constant peril of national interests and other unsavoury organisations breathing down our necks, Albert and I were able to finally relax into an environment in which we felt at home. We had always been close, but now rather than being close from necessity and looking out for each other we could truly get to know each other and forge a bond neither of us had experienced before. I loved him more than anything and for eight long happy years we had the chance to live and work together, doing what we loved with who we loved free of worry and concern. It felt like the good times had finally come and would continue until the end, but the fates had other plans. All good things must come to an end, sometimes not all at once in a catastrophic event but slowly and almost imperceptibly. Over my time in the Venatori, I saw several friends slowly change and eventually leave altogether, given another top-secret assignment far away from us. It was never an issue; new people would always come in eventually and so I was still surrounded by friends never really thinking anything of it. That is, until Albert began to behave weirdly. Slowly but surely, he became more and more distant and absorbed in other thoughts. We spent less and less time together, he seemingly having become occupied in the work of Elias Tonra, his new supervisor. As I thought about it more, trying to work out why he would drift away from me, I realised how it all started and ended with Elias. Come to think of it, it had been the same as those before as well. I dropped everything I was working on, devoting all my time and effort to finding out what I could about the man, but he was illusive. Not quite illusive enough for me though. I mapped his actions, who he had spoken to, reassignments he had ordered, and began to get a glimpse at a larger picture that I didn’t like the look of. Elias had an unnatural capability to indoctrinate and convince, he had the entire organisation wrapped around his little finger. Clearly, he was engaged in something big, Albert would have to listen to me. Of course, he didn’t. By the time I confronted him, it was too late. Elias had already gotten his teeth into him and Albert was long gone. He didn’t believe anything I said, accusing me of being paranoid, of forging the evidence I had, of being jealous of Elias. If I cared for him, he said that I would be supporting his project, not trying to ruin his opportunities. He left me distraught on the laboratory floor, the last memory I have, his back turned as he slammed the door shut with finality behind him. As I said, all good things must come to an end and this spelled the end of my time with the Venatori. I had no idea what I had stumbled into, but it was clearly big. Elias was a big fish and a man that I could do nothing about alone, so once again, I fled. This time, there was nothing stopping me from leaving. I gathered a number of my inventions and what magical power I had accrued into a bag of holding and took my leave of the organisation with no plan of where to go or what the future would hold. I put my fate fully into the hands of Hashan to set me on the right path, for I was truly lost. Escape into fire Though it was easy to leave, Elias clearly didn’t want me to get far. As soon as I got far enough outside of Lhea to be out of eyeshot, I was attacked on the road by a group of masked assailants in dark armour, concealing every inch of skin. They were powerful, much more so than the average thug and I was quickly overwhelmed. By some miraculous foresight, I had taken a planar rod of fire in my escape and now in my desperation, clutched it and prayed for a miracle. When I opened my eyes, I found myself in an empty plain of desolation surrounded only by empty blasted ashen fields and a crushing, dry heat. In that instant, Hashan had given me the power to visit other worlds, and I became a planeswalker. A visit such as this marks the mortal form, the plane of fire burning a red streak in my dark hair that would forever mark me. Surviving in burning hot desert may be challenging for most people, but when creating nourishment and water is a minor wonder to you it’s barely a concern. Of course, the cinder storms were far from ideal and so I struck out for the only bastion of civilisation (if it can be called that) in this blistered wasteland; the City of Brass. This was a difficult trek to make, even with my extensive knowledge of the planes and substantial magical power the ashen fields are full of all manner of perils that I would do well to avoid. Luckily, I had appeared relatively close to the city and only had to traverse a minimal distance of wilderness to reach it, encountering little beyond a pair of salamanders on my way there. The City of Brass is breath-taking to behold, not a sight that you could ever forget as long as you lived. Dominated by brilliant spiralling minarets and crammed with colour, sound, smell and action everywhere, glittering with burnished brass in the white-hot inferno of the sun. Intimidating doesn’t do it justice, I don’t think that my words really can, but suffice it to say that I was terrified, knowing that though I had escaped peril on the material plane I could just as, if not more easily find myself in an even more dangerous predicament if I made one more move in this place. So, I tread cautiously, avoiding communication where I could and Efreeti at all costs. Though I could talk to them without issue, I had no local currency and precious little to trade and so I searched for some measure of familiarity, other mortals who had ended up stranded here or even other planeswalkers. The vast majority of the mortal population of the City of Brass are slaves to the Efreet but some few have managed to forge independent lives here. One such person was Tei Lun, a Tyresian man who had amassed a significant fortune from buying and selling magical items while maintaining perfect confidentiality of his clients. It was his shop ‘Wonders from abroad’ that I stumbled into, filthy and exhausted as more or less my first and last hope at finding a safe base of operation in the City. Tei seemed to take some pity on me, offering shelter and safety without yet a demand for anything in exchange. Of course, I was grateful for his hospitality, taking the opportunity to clean myself and recover from the gruelling march through the desert before we sat together that evening to discuss what would happen next. My tuning fork had been irreparably damaged in the wild discharge of magic of my first casting and so I had need of new ones. Tei had a rivalry with an Efreet called Rhoyjar, one of the sons of The Pestilent Raja who was disrupting his business and threatening his suppliers. Tei also explained that this Rhoyjar was also a planeswalker, in possession of tuning forks for the planes of fire and air and that if I was somehow able to dispose of him from the city, I would not only be able to take those for myself, but I would have a permanent secure base in Tei’s establishment whenever I found myself in the city. We drew up the contract and both signed, satisfied with what we would get out of the deal as I began to plot how I would take down an Efreet prince. Rhoyjar was an arrogant and prideful being, terribly aggressive and quick to furious outbursts and so I knew I would have to be careful in my approach. I came up with a brilliant and subtle plan, where I would lure him into the jaws of an inescapable attack and destroy him while he lay helpless. Of course, that plan fell apart instantly. The nerves of seeing him in person got to me and all the planning I had fell out of my mind so when I stood there in the middle of the bazaar blocking his passage, I couldn’t think to do anything but challenge him to a duel. Thankfully, I had the foresight to insist that we set aside our means of escape, so I could ensure I didn’t damage the tuning forks I needed but it was still a shockingly stupid thing to do. Rhoyjar leapt at the chance to shred a mortal planeswalker and sprang into action, flaming scimitars in hand. I could barely do a thing but apart from defend, his assault was quick and furious, and it took everything I had to hold my own against him though very quickly it became apparent that it wouldn’t be enough. I was tiring and he was just getting started so I acted out in desperation, casting plane shift and forcing Rhoyjar out of the City of Brass and into the mansion of Magister Elizabeth Ailamos. Miraculously, it worked, and I couldn’t hold back a full-bodied laugh imagining the chaos of his intrusion into her meticulously organised domain as I gathered Rhoyjar’s discarded tuning forks and made my hasty escape back to Tei. Despite how funny what I did was, I knew the consequences of my actions. The Pestilent Raja would not be happy to hear of the humiliating defeat of one of his princes, and though Tei assured me that I would be safe with him, I didn’t want to risk losing my only safe haven on the plane to the wrath of an angry Raja. I stayed one more night at ‘Wonders from abroad’ before bidding my farewells to Tei and shifting back to the material world. On the run Elias hadn’t given up his hunt. I continued to evade his people as best I could, killing my attackers when possible and fleeing into other planes when not. My experiences on the plane of air were much less stressful than on the plane of fire, I shunted into existence on a small grassy rock that was adrift in the labyrinthine winds and was able to use my magic to shape the interior into something that resembled a comfortable home. That is, while not locked in a terrible hurricane in which case you had better get out of the plane as soon as possible. For my excursion to the plane of air, I earned a streak of white through my hair which would forever mark me. The last several months have been hell. I’ve had a few collective days of peace in my home in the plane of air while the currents were slow, but that was rare. Very rare. On the plane of fire, I’m in constant fear of being found by the Pestilent Raja and I can hardly spend longer than a day in the material world before being attacked by Elias’s tireless hounds. Peace of mind is a thing of the past, restful sleep a distant memory, friends, ambition, goals, faith even, all fallen to the wayside in my single-minded desperate clawing attempt to cling onto the meagre life force that I had left with no end in sight. I was helped a very few times, most notably my life was saved by a planeswalker named Azhek stepping in on my behalf for little apparent reason as he disintegrated one of the efreet hounding me, the others taking almost all of what little I still had before fleeing the scene too. Azhek was a confused man, he didn’t seem to understand what I said to him when I explained my situation and the peril I was facing. He was more interested in his holiday than getting involved any further, so I shifted back to the material plane again. Salvation in chaos I had steadily been getting better at aiming my arrivals to the material world, but this time for some reason I was shunted far away from where I wanted into the heart of a titanic storm, laying waste to thousands of acres of the world in all directions with no perceivable end. I desperately hunted for shelter, there was no way I could survive a storm of this magnitude in the open. Fortunately, I had been dropped in the midst of a craggy mountain range with dozens of tunnels and caves into which I could huddle for some small measure of security. It was difficult to sleep, but I eventually recouped the power I would need to shift again and escape from this hellish screaming wind, worse even than the worst I had experienced in the plane of air. So, I focussed, clutching my tuning fork I shifted again. I could not even begin to posit as to the nature of that storm, because it fucked my planar travel to absolute shit. I instantly recognised where I ended up, but it didn’t make any sense how I had got there. Limbo is not an easy place to reach, and it’s an even harder place to be. Limbo is a realm of true chaos, matter being made and unmade, reformed, burned, frozen and everything in between over the course of 30 seconds but it can be tamed. A powerful, ordered mind can force out the chaos and create stability in a limited area and luckily for me, my mind is certainly powerful. I was able to forge a small fifteen-foot radius domain of rock and earth around me. Now all I needed to do was survive the day until I could shift out of Limbo once again, I just had to hope I wouldn’t get found. The marks that the outer planes leave are more significant than those of the inner planes. This time I was rewarded with a slowly shifting and undulating colour changing ring around my left thigh which would forever mark me. I lay down exhausted on my small island of peace to rest, hoping to Hashan that I would finally find some safety. Of course, nothing had gone my way so far, so why would that change now? Hideous malformed Slaadi took notice of my tiny pocket of stability and were enraged by it, charging in their screaming droves to destroy it and punish me for creating it. I still had a lot of magic left in me, but there were dozens of them and only one of me, and I was exhausted. The first few were easy enough to dispatch, but there was no real end to how many of them would come and I was quickly forced to begin thinking creatively, demolishing and reforming portions of my platform to slow their assault and crush their advances. No such defence could be mounted in perpetuity of course and I quickly found myself running out of power, and then running dry completely. In the instant I had before they finished me off once and for all, I cried out to Hashan openly for help, and for the first time in my life, he answered directly. When you reach a certain level of significance to a God, they will, on occasion, step in directly to help. Hashan stepped in for me, burning away the slaadi around me in a brilliant blaze of radiant fire. I shielded my eyes from the brightness of it as I heard their hideous dying screams and opened them again to see a strange figure with peculiar bearing and unusual dimensions wading through piles of discarded slaadi, finishing off any that survived the initial barrage. Then, I heard the divine voice of my God. Hashan was full of sympathy and courage, he had been watching me the entire time and lamented what had happened, but more than that he gave me a way out. I was to find a group of extraordinary people in Edranar, they themselves engaged in thwarting what was hunting me. I would be able to find safety, security, friendship once again and have the opportunity to. Finally. Stop. Fleeing. The man introduced himself as Ferril, an agent of the mythical being ‘Lady Loss’ and a collector of the broken, a returner of the lost. I suppose I fit that bill very well, no doubt about that. Ferril gathered the piles of slaadi around us and cast a spell on me, something to help when I arrived, he said and then we shifted. I found myself alone in an empty street at night in central Khora, as I saw the house I was supposed to find go up in flames. Description Appearance Agnieszka is short and skinny and abundantly unkempt. She has long, dark hair streaked with colour from her extra planar experiences loosely and ineffectually bound back in a messy bun in a futile attempt to keep it out of her face. She wears thick wide spectacles which magnify her already large eyes and has generally plain features without any attempt at making herself appear more attractive. She generally wears practical and comfortable laboratory attire to resist spills and other workplace accidents but also is often seen wearing a heavy mask to prevent exposure to gasses and other explosions. Personality Relationships Character One Character Information Notable Items Abilities Feats Racial Abilities Class Abilities * Example ** Exampleir Example *Example Category: Category:Peril